For the TBR pile...We Are Not Such Things

I'm not a big fan of most true crime, but this book by Nadine Justine Van Der Leun caught my eye in my Net Galley newsletters. I remember reading about this south African murder case and wondering, "How did this happen?" I've read the author's magazine pieces and she's a fine writer, so I look forward to reading this book.

Anonymous--a star-studded riff on the Shakespeare authorship question

It's always fun to read the articles about who "really" wrote Shakespeare's plays. In one of the only fan letters I ever wrote in my life, I asked Isaac Asimov (whose two-part guide to Shakespare is terrific) if he had an opinion on the issue. He did not. (Yes, he answered my fan letter with a typed index card reply. Which I still have somewhere. Yes. Isaac Asimov!!!!) But I digress.

I'm a fan of British costume dramas. They're often a little on the slow side but they almost always make up for it with fantastic acting. Anonymous is the perfect example. It's an Elizabethan romp starring mother/daughter actresses Joely Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave as Elizaabeth One at various stages in her life.The premise of the movie is that Shakespeare's work was really written by an aristocrat and that Shakespeare himself was a nasty little man who acted as the aristocrat's "front" and killed Christopher Marlowe because he was about to out him.  (Speaking of fronts, if you love good acting, check out Trumbo.  The movie about the Hollywood Ten's most famous member is a feast of fine acting, with Louis C.K. and John Goodman outstanding in supporting roles and Bryan Cranston and Helen Mirren at the top of their game.)

Saturday Shakespeare Meme

I would believe you Morpheus!

If you've never seen Laurence Fishburne in the 1995 film version of Othello (with Kenneth Branagh as Iago), it's worth looking for. At the time, Fisburne was the first black actor to play the Moor in a major American movie; up to then, the role had always been played by actors in black face, including both Anthony Hopkins and Laurence Olivier.

Shakespeare Earrings

The last time I browsed Cafe Press it was all about the clothing--t-shirts and hats and tote bags and such. Also mugs. I didn't realize they'd gotten into Etsy territory with hand-made jewelry items until I saw these earrings for sale. You can buy them here, but be warned, they come with a warning that the earrings are not for sale to, or use by, anyone under 12.  I'm not sure why that is. I can see they'd be a choking hazard for very young children but surely kids grow out of that phase by the time they start going to school?

Feminist Friday and Shakespeare

Over at the Conversation, a website that celebrates "Academic rigor and journalistic flair," there's an essay on how Shakespeare helped writer Germaine Greer shape her feminist masterpiece, The Female Eunuch. It's a long-ish piece and if you're someone who tags blog posts with TLDR, then you'll want to skip down past the photo of Greer speaking at Sydney University in 2005 for the good stuff. My favorite takeaway from the article was this quote: "Greer cites Shakespeare’s poem The Phoenix and the Turtle, as an example of the fullest expression of the ideal of love “as a stabilizing, creative, harmonizing force in the universe'."

I don't even remember that poem--my knowledge of Shakespeare's poetry is mostly limited to a few of his well-known sonnets. So I looked it up. Wikipedia, bless their hearts, has an entry on the allegorical poem.  they call it one of Shakespeare's "most obscure works" (making me feel better for not having remembered it), and one that is open to multiple interpretations. The one thing I do remember is that the "turtle" of the title is the "turtledove," not the reptile everyone used to have as a pet before fears of salmonella made ownership of turtles a health risk.

The "Phoenix" portrait of Queen Elizabeth I

Some scholars have identified "the Phoenix" as Queen Elizabeth 1 and the turtle as John Salisbury, who was a married courtier from a powerful Welsh family.

The language of the poem is gorgeous:

Here the anthem doth commence:
Love and constancy is dead;
Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence

but you'll need footnotes all along the way. The Conversation essay makes a persuasive case for a Shakespearean influence on Greer's work, and it's just one more example of how Shakespeare's work continues to resonate almost half a millennium later.

Shakespeare and Guns

Today is National Gun Violence Awareness Day. Yesterday, there was a shooting at UCLA. Not long ago, there was a shooting at the college where my brother got his law degree. On Thanksgiving, there was a shooting at the college where a friend's son goes to school. We all remember the Virginia Tech shootings, and I have ties to there as well--my father, my brother, my aunt, my uncle, and a cousin all spent time there.So today we're supposed to wear orange to show our solidarity and support for the victims of gun violence and their families. It's a start, I suppose. I remember when the red ribbons first started showing up at celebrity events to promote awareness of AIDS.  And the ribbons spread. And with the awareness came the benefits and the research.

I really hope that the orange t-shirts do the same. Guns have been around a long time--longer, probably than you think. We know Shakespeare mentioned them in his plays, but so did Geoffrey Chaucer two hundred years earlier. Guns and Ammo magazine online has an interesting article that argues William Shakespeare was a "gun writer." The article is well worth reading and the citations are right on the money.

Behind the Scenes of Shakespeare's Stories

I always read the Afterwords in books. I like knowing what bit of stray inspiration sparked a novel, or what random collision of events spawned a tale. (I remember reading Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box and thinking he'd read the same eBay listing I had, a listing where a woman was offering her father-in-law's suit for sale because her kid was afraid of his ghost. I've never seen an interview where he talks about it, but I'd bet that's where he got the idea.)

In school we always get the bare bones explanation for where Shakespeare got his plots but they never explained that King Lear is actually related to Cinderella, as Shakespeare's Storybook does. I read that in the book blurb and now I HAVE to get this book.